Bringing Back the the Coast Manual of Lettering and Designs
The Coast Manual of Lettering and Designs (1907) is one of the rarest antique sign painting books out there, and I'm currently helping Jay Smith with a Kickstarter to bring it back into print after nearly 120 years.
This project follows the article Jay wrote about his luck in acquiring this book, and four more classic originals, last year. He talked about this in his BLAG Meet session (recording coming soon), which included some discussion of the possibility of reprinting it.
The plan for this project is to use high-quality scans of Jay's original copy to create a shop-friendly, ring-bound edition at the same size. He will then keep this new edition and donate the original to the wonderful folks at Letterform Archive.
Below you'll find some more pictures of the book. If you also want to get a copy of this extremely rare publication for your shop, then back the Kickstarter now. This includes the opportunity to get your name inside!
Cover, spreads, and pages from the Coast Manual of Lettering and Designs.
The Coast Manual in BLAG 07
By coincidence, the Coast Manual is among the five publications reviewed by Jason Carne in BLAG 07, the Letterheads special. It is one of the books that the Letterheads pored over in their early days, and so here is a sneak preview of the text that Jason wrote about it.